On the Road with the Ramones

Yeah, I know. I’ve been a bad blogger. But there’s a good reason for it. Last month was my birthday and I received about 10,072 new books that I’ve been wanting for ages. Being the book pig that I am, I started reading them all simultaneously, which was quite fun, but makes finishing a book take 10,072 times longer than normal. Moreover, I abandoned several pre-birthday books that I was in the middle of reading. So, I’ve been reading like crazy, but not writing. So, here’s some catch up from the last month.

On the Road With The Ramones
By Monte Melnick and Frank Meyer
312 pages



Many people have called this the best book on the Ramones. Hard to disagree. Monte Melnick was friend and road manager to the Ramones throughout their entire career. Given that the quartet was essentially a touring machine (2263 live shows), Melnick had perhaps closer access than anyone outside the band. Fortunately, rather than penning his own memoirs, Melnick used his considerable access to get interviews with pretty much anyone and everyone who ever had anything to do with the Ramones. He then complied these into a comprehensive oral history that offers what must be the definitive account of the Ramones saga.

First of all, I’ve been hearing the Ramones music since I was a kid. When I was a 14-year-old punk rocker, the Ramones landmark first album was in constant rotation. That said, I never really felt as though I “got” the Ramones. Yeah, they were cool and fun, but the songs tended to sound pretty similar and the group (famously) refused to evolve from its original sound. I respected the Ramones, but didn’t really get much into their music beyond the first album.



Two things set me straight. The first was Leg’s McNeil’s oral history of punk, which contains a surprisingly rich analysis of the Ramones and their place in the punk rock canon. These tales inspired me to dig a bit further, and I rented (and then immediately purchased) a copy of “It’s Alive,” a compilation of Ramones concert footage taken at all points of its lengthy career. The highlight of this double-DVD set is undoubtedly the footage taken from the Rainbow in London on New Year’s Eve 1977. For anyone who questions the greatness of the Ramones, one look at this astonishing live set should eliminate any such doubts. Quite frankly, it’s one of the most intense, killer live concerts you will ever witness, crystallizing everything that was great about the Ramones -- the songs, the look, the attitude, and the commitment to destroying the stage with all of the above. While many of the punk bands that followed in the immediate wake of the Ramones placed a low premium on musical skills, the Ramones were an unbelievably tight live band. All of this led me to Melnick’s book.

The basics of the Ramones story are known by many: The group never achieved any real commercial success during its career, never had a hit song or a hit record, were ignored by the radio, and watched in dismay as less talented peers usurped the Ramones in popularity. (The group earned -- and continues to earn -- far more royalties from their T-shirt sales than their music.) Also fairly well known are the dynamics of the band -- they hated each other. Vocalist Joey was a liberal Jewish New Yorker, while guitarist Johnny was a staunch conservative from a military background. Dee Dee was the ultimate rocker, the obvious inspiration for the Sex Pistols’ Sid Viscous and the Clash’s Paul Simoneon. Melnick’s book covers all of this in detail, but also unearths plenty of material that I didn’t know about.

The real reason for the group’s musical and personal decline was a war waged over a women. Joey’s girlfriend, Linda, dumped him and took up with Johnny, whom she eventual married. Clearly, this would cause problems for any two parties invested in a business relationship, but the Ramones soldiered on for more than a decade after this rift occurred, poisoning any chance of harmony between Joey and Johnny. (The two refused to speak with each other for years; even in the studio, they would deliver messages back and forth through a third party -- even if they were standing side by side.) The Ramones lack of success in the U.S. meant that they traveled in a passenger van and played almost exclusively in small clubs. This was a startling contrast to the group’s reception in places like Europe and South America, where they were hugely popular. The Ramones would go play to 50,000 people in South America and come home to hit the club circuit. Also of interest was the fact that the band traveled in a van, while their crew traveled in “rock star” style bus, complete with sleeping quarters, etc. The reason for this was that the crew had to travel ahead of the band, and needed to be able to sleep. Contrasting this were the top quality hotel accommodations insisted upon by the group -- they refused to stay in a hotel that did not have a swimming pool for example.

Finally, Melnick structures the book in a way that keeps things moving along at about the pace of a Ramones song. Rather than offering a standard, chronological history of the Ramones, Melnick divides the book into conceptual chapters that examine one aspect of the group’s legacy. So, there’s a chapter about music videos, a chapter about sex and drugs, a chapter about doing press, etc. This keeps things interesting, and even allows the reader to skip around to the interesting bits without losing hold of the overall narrative. The photos are outstanding, too.

The Good: A comprehensive look at the group from a true insider. Given the band’s animosity towards one another, Melnick’s account is certainly less biased than that of say Dee Dee Ramone, who has written about the band from his perspective. All of the major players are here, and just about every minor character, too. Melnick seems to have dug up pretty much everyone involved in any capacity. Moreover, he obviously loved the Ramones; this shines through in the book without being fawning or losing perspective. It’s an honest, warts-and-all account that doesn’t trash the people involved.

The Bad: No major complaints here. Melnick does get sidetracked into things like an entire chapter about roadies, but these are usually pretty hilarious and interesting. Of lesser interest is his opening chapter, where he writes about his own experiences as a musician in New York. No one was reading the book to hear about that, and it’s not all that compelling. (Prior to the Ramones, Melnick was in a band with drummer Tommy Ramone, so there is some relevance to this material; it’s just pretty dull.) I guess the only thing bad is the price. This book is nowhere near a penny yet, unless you go for an earlier edition, which I do not recommend.

Overall, if you’re a big Ramones fan, you’ve probably already read this book. It’s a must. If you’re not a Ramones fan, you really need to check out the live Rainbow footage from It’s Alive before proceeding. You will then become a huge Ramones fan and want to pick up a copy of this most excellent oral history.

You can pick up a copy of the book here, although the price isn't really right.

Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy

I wasn’t intending to post this, as it’s not directly related to books, but I added a lil something at the end to round it out.



It’s fashionable to hate on the new Guns N Roses album Chinese Democracy. It’s overproduced, grandiose, pretentious and so forth. Even those who have hailed it a masterpiece are most likely trying to butter up Axl for a possible interview. So, here’s the real scoop from a long time GNR fan who is willing to take the album for what it is. First off, it’s neither a masterpiece nor a catastrophe. In many ways it’s a logical next step from the Illusion albums, although it shouldn’t have taken so long to come up with this batch of tunes. The reality is that, with everyone from the original GNR departed, what I’m listening to is Axl Rose and his singing. Axl’s singing was always the thing that made GNR special. Yes, the band kicked ass, the songs that Izzy wrote were amazing, but it was Axl’s vocals cemented the deal. Well, let me tell you, he sings his fucking ass off on this album. Let me direct you to 3:53 in “Street of Dreams,” a blatant and quite wonderful little cousin to “November Rain,” mixed with a slice of “Estranged.” It’s one of Axl’s finest performances of all time, especially at 4:15 when he completely lets go and rips it as good as he ever did. Axl has said that this is his proudest moment to date, and you can’t blame him. The dude sings his ass off. A good portion of these tracks have been kicking around in some form for years, including “Street of Dreams,” which has been available in live and demo form for some time under the auspices “The Blues.” A month or so before it was released, someone leaked almost the entire album in pretty much finished, mixed form. The final album is different from even those “final” leaks. This includes Axl redoing some of the vocals on the end of “Street of Dreams.” And he improved the shit out of it. Axl’s obsessive tinkering made all the difference in the world. I can’t even listen to any of the previous versions. It’s that much better.



Also worthy is the barnstorming title track (always good in live and demo form) and “Madagascar,” which people seem to think is close to Illusion-era GNR. I give it a six out of ten. I like “I.R.S.” and “If The World.” The former is an Illusion-worthy outtake and the latter is a snaky bit of weirdness that features yet another stellar performance from Axl. The dude doesn’t seemed to have lost a step vocally, and yes this material is even more obtuse and complex and orchestral than even the most pretentious moments on Illusion, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything worth hearing here. If nothing else, Axl put his entire heart, soul, and being into this album and that makes it worthy of a closer listen than the summery critiques from the mainstream press. Give it another listen.

As for books, there have been a number written about GNR, most of them pretty awful. Probably the best GNR book to date is the autobiography of Slash, the only book written from an insider’s perspective.



Granted, Slash doesn’t have many nice things to say about Axl and his account is biased, but it’s still a fascinating read and one of the few to give a fairly honest account of the GNR saga. Another good GNR book is “The Photographic History” by photographer/band friend Robert John, who had fairly exclusive access to the group, especially in the early days.




The book contains no real text, but the photos are amazing. If you’re a fan, this one is a must. Used copies are about ten bucks, which is worth it. Another recent book of note is “Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction" by Marc Canter, a friend to the band when it was first playing in Los Angeles clubs.



Tons of great anecdotes about the early shows here, including how the band worked to tool its sound, image, and live show into a cohesive image. The photos are incredible. The book also gives readers access to a private web site that contains video and audio clips from some of these shows. That in and of itself would be worth the price of admision were the web features more than snippets. Audio/video of full performances would be insane, and it’s good to know that so much of this material was preserved. Instead, you get a tease from a site that doesn’t work all that well in the first place. Frankly, the book is better by itself, but the web features are a fun little bonus. Other than those, almost every GNR book is a rehash of old material, mainly interviews in the mainstream press that were already widely available and well known. In other words, there’s not much additinoal insight. At some, point I’ll get around to writing a more full account of all of these books, but for now, that’s all I’ve got.

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (1996/2006) by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. 454 pages.



Please Kill Me is Legs McNeil’s stab at the oral history of the punk genre. I recently read McNeil's oral history of the porn industry (no jokes, please) and liked it enough to check out this one. Like most oral histories and McNeil's other book, there is no context, just quote after quote detailing a history of punk. I say "history" as this book contains pretty much those whom Legs was able to interview. For those he didn't interview, McNeil takes quotes from magazine and newspaper articles to flesh things out. The result is a somewhat skewed history of punk, centered around New York, expanding abroad to England, and returning to the States once again.



Originally published in 1996, the book abruptly ends right around the time of Nirvana, failing to take into account post-Nirvana groups such as Green Day, Blink-182 and their Warped Tour ilk. It’s very New York-centric and doesn’t have much to say about the contributions of Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, although there is a bit of material on Detroit legends the MC5 and Iggy Pop. The book pretty much ends at 1980 and then sprints through the 1990s without much insight. As long as you know you’re getting a biased account, you're all good. The major CBGB-era players are front and center, and there are numerous fun accounts of the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, the Ramones, Television and so forth. Less covered are groups such as Blondie and the Talking Heads, who were also part of the New York scene, but who are reduced to bit players or ignored altogether. Given the scope of the book -- ranging from the late 1960s to the early 1980s -- McNeil covers an admirable amount of territory, but the overall feel is superficial, a 450-page snapshot. If you want to learn more about any of these groups you’re going to have to search elsewhere.



Given the material and the characters involved, there are plenty of good stories here. Some of them you’ve heard, some of them you probably haven’t. (Did you know Andy Warhol was once shot by a crazed fan?) Some of it’s funny, some of it’s seedy. Less explored is the irony that punk’s fast tempos and short hair were push backs on the excesses of 1970s stadium rock, yet many of the punk bands fell prey to these same excesses. The New York Dolls broke up because two of the members wanted to fly back to New York to score heroin.



The Good: Ambitious and exhaustive account backed by a remarkable number of voices to tell the first half of punk’s history. Anyone you’ve ever heard of (and their sister, and manager, and drug dealer) is in here somewhere and there’s a great index that breaks it all down. I like long books and this one is reasonably long. McNeil makes a strong case for the origins of punk as being from New York, not London, and the book is highly in-depth at points. You certainly come away knowing that there were a shit-ton of drugs and sex going around in New York at the time. A definite focus on glam rock as influencing punk.

The Bad: As with all oral histories, light on musical analysis, which was one of the reasons this scene was so interesting. Very New York-centric, with very little info/voices from London except for the Sex Pistols brief tour of the U.S. The Clash? Barely a mention. There is almost nothing beyond that and the material from York in terms of U.S punk. If you’re looking for a book that covers D.C., the Midwest, and/or L.A., hardcore, of the evolution of punk beyond the demise of the Sex Pistols, it’s not here. It would be great to have a second volume that took it from where it left off and really delved into the punk influenced bands that followed in the wake of the initial few explosions.

For a sweeping overview of the origins of punk, Please Kill Me works just fine. As long as you know you’re getting a New York-centric perspective and only the beginning of a larger story, it does the job and does it well. For musical analysis, you’ll have to dig further, but this is a good place to start if you just want to get the original story straight.

Not a one-cent book, unfortunately, but you can still find it used for a decent price.

The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys

The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys (2005) by Alan Light



The Beastie Boys first album was the soundtrack to my 15th and 16th years of life. It was an incredible piece of work that galvanized everything I love about music into a wondrous amalgamation of sound, rhythm, fury, hormones, smart-assedness, and pretty much everything else a young man of that age is seeking to discover. The beats were jamming, the rhymes were intricate, hilarious, and super cool. And Led Zeppelin samples on top of that? Come on, man! Licensed to Ill was a work of teenage art, comparable to the early work of the Ramones, but with a hip hop twist.



It’s too bad that the Beastie’s sort of disown this period of their musical legacy. But the overwhelming sense that the group gives now is that Licensed to Ill was a put-on, a joke, a parody. That's not true at all, and they know it and so did everyone who loved that album. Revisionist history. But the group did mature, and there's nothing wrong with that. Never did the band grow as much between albums as it did for 1989’s Paul’s Boutique remains among my top five hip hop albums of all time.



If you don’t have this album and know it by heart, I can’t even begin to tell you. If you know, then you already know. Needless to say that if you consider yourself a rap music fan in any way, you need to know this album like the back of your hand. Check Your Head was a third masterpiece, showcasing the diversity of the various sounds the trio was able to create. And it all sounded smooth and easy.



Ill Communication was mostly more of the same. The falloff began here, but there were still enough cool tracks to make it a winner. After that, the Beasties never put out another worthwhile album. There were some good songs here and there, but overall the shit was wack.

Former Spin somebody or another Alan Light offers a brief oral history of the Beasties in The Skills To Pay The Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys. This 2005 book pretty much covers everything from the band’s early days to that kind of shitty album they put out in 2004. The oral history format makes for a quick read. (One Amazon reviewer called it “Beasties For Dummies, not an unfair criticism.) That said, Light tracks down quotes from all of the key players (Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, Chuck D, Run DMC, Money Mark and anyone else you can think of), including the Beasties themselves, and sprints through of the group’s career.

The Good: You can knock this one out in an afternoon or two. Light gets all the key players and it gives a broad overview of the band’s career. Also of interest is how success changed the group from cocky to arrogant, with Adam “MCA” Yauch apparently leading the way. If you’ve never heard the story before, this is probably all you need.

The Bad: With nothing but quotes, there’s little other than the basic plot -- the events that comprised the Beasties’ career. Yauch and the rest of the Beasties eventually denounced “Licensed to Ill” and got all Tibetan on our ass, but the book lends no insight into how that evolution came about.



Moreover, there is little insight into the music, how it evolved, or the group’s creative process. Instead you read, for the gazillionth time, about the skateboard ramp set up during the Check Your Head and that the studio was named G-Son. That was super cool in 1992. Now? Not so much.

Overall, if you don’t know the story, this book covers the basics. If you're music book geek like me, it's reasonably fun read that you can kick out in a sitting or two. All the key players are here, offering their perspective, and it’s fun when the occasional cat fight breaks. I like oral histories and this one is pretty much what you'd expect. If you're a fan of the Beasties, or want to know their basic story, this is as good as anyplace to start, as long as you don't expect to learn much about the music. It would be great to have a serious biography of these guys alongside rigorous analysis of their music. Given the group's impressive body of work, it deserves a more scholarly, in-depth treatment. This would require the participation of the band, which seems to be one reason why there is not a really good bio on the Beasties to date.

You can pick up a copy for a little under $6.00, shipping included. Wait a year, and I'm sure you can scoop it a lot cheaper.

Music City Babylon: Inside the World of Country Music

Music City Babylon: Inside the World of Country Music (1992) by Scott Faragher.



Buyer beware. I'm a music book geek, you may not be. This book is a "tell all" from a unique persepctive. Faragher was a Nashville-based booking agent for a number of big-time country music stars in the 1980s. Booking agents are contracted by the musicians to book concerts for them, set up tours, etc. The agent gets a 10% commission on anything they book. It's amazing what some of these groups got paid way back then. I'm talking $6000-$20,000 per night and this is back in the early 1980s. Crazy! Of course, a lot of these artists didn't save their money and went broke.

Okay, so here's a little review from James Stephenson, Soc. of the Cincinnati Lib., Washington, D.C. He's not a fan:

Faragher, a reluctant Nashville insider, here attempts to "expose" the country music racket. Far from being an enlightening glimpse behind the scenes, his book is nothing more than a tedious, mean-spirited grouse at an industry whose sins and scandals are (at least by Faragher's account) no worse than those of any other big business. Faragher engages in pointless name-calling and personal attacks on co-workers, associates, and the professional musicians in his circle. Much of his vehemence is leveled at obscure supporting figures whose names will have little meaning to even the most ardent fans. The amateurish writing only underscores the book's banality. Not recommended.

Ouch. Well for the $19.95 this book cost in 1992, Stephenson makes some good points. But for $4.00, this book has some merit. That's a qualified some, mind you.

The Good: Faragher tells is like it is. He offers facts, figures, and dates to back it up. You get some pretty good stories about George Jones, Ricky Skaggs (a big jerk, per Faragher), Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Randy Travis (a big wuss, per Faragher) and so on. With characters like these, there are bound to be some good stories, and Faragher doesn't disappoint. Here's a sample:

"Of all the entertainers I have ever met, known, or dealth with, James Brown is the worst, with the singular exception of Ricky Skaggs. He truly belives that he is the father of rock and roll. No, 'father' is not strong enough. He calls himself the Godfather. He knows that he is greater by far, and certainly more universally acclaimed, than Elvis Presley, or anyone else for that matter. According to him, his is the only face that can be recognized worldwide, by anyone, anywhere on earth. 'Besides, Elvis never played Africa!'"



Brown later refuses to let Faragher take off his sport coat in a boiling hot backstage dressing room. Faragher tries to negotiate the particulars of a show and Brown won't say anything but "God will handle it." And so on and so forth. There's some great stuff on Jerry Lee Lewis, too, whom Faragher adores despite his legendary eccentricities. Faragher clearly thinks that most of these people are disloyal jerks and portrays almost all of them that way. The one's he likes, he seems to shrug off as just part of the business.

Some of the minor characters are a hoot, too. The best one is probably Sherwood Cryer, a minor legend who was the co-owner of Gilley's in Pasadena, Texas back in the day. The battles between Cryer and Mickey Gilley are insane. Unfortunately, I had to go outside the book to get some of the real goods on Cryer, but he is definitely a guy worth Googling.

Faragher offers a insider's perspective from an area of the music industry that you almost never read about. I had little understanding of what booking agents do, or how they conduct business. They work separate and independent from the musician's management, but generally work for a booking agency. Faragher was president and booker for In Concert, an agency that he helped found after his former boss died. There's some good inside baseball on how artists, once they hit big, generally fire the booking agents and get more prominent agents (Faragher's main competition is the William Morris Agency), or even start their own booking companies and hire an in-house agent, thus keeping a larger piece of the pie. Faragher paints almost all of the artists are vain, greedy bastards who will stab anyone in the back to get ahead. It's also surprising how whiny and childlike some of artists are behind the scenes.

The Bad: Faragher's not much of a writer or a storyteller, which brings things down considerably. The book is largely incoherent, just a random collection of chapters, each of them covering a particular artist. So, there's not much continuity. It jumps from subject to subject. That wouldn't be the end of the world, had Faragher not padded the book with chapters that detail things like a relatively uneventful trip to Jamaica and his take on why artists are such vile people. He also admits to being pretty much a snake himself, though. Again, Faragher seems to take this as all part of the business. Everyone's a snake, so he's one, too. There is a LOT of superfluous details that aren't very interesting, and the chapters on artists such as Lou Rawls go nowhere and offer almost no insight.

Overall, this is for the true geeks only, but that doesn't mean it's all bad. Because Faragher only represented a handful of artists, the book does not offer a comprehensive look at country music or the industry, just the small slice of which Faragher took part. But in that minutiae, there's some pretty good music book geek reading. Not the best ever, but a fun quick read that's hard to beat for the price.

Click here to buy it for one cent.

Blogs suck (here's mine)

I hate blogs. Let me make that clear up front. But the good ones are well worth it, so here goes. The purpose of this blog is not to write about my so-called life, but to write about books. Books and music are probably my two biggest passions. There are two kinds of books I will focus on, but I read a lot so, whatever catches my fancy is fair game. The first kind is one cent books. Yes, the kind you buy used from Amazon and pay $4.00 total, shipping included. Those books rule my world. But you can't always find the books you want for a penny. So, the other type of books I'll be writing about are music books. I've been reading about music and musicians for as long as I can remember. I can hardly resist them and I've read scads of them. But I'm always looking for more, so hit me up if you know some good ones. Now, the penultimate book is the one cent music book. It's rare, but it happens. So, hope someone gets something out of this. Should be fun!

PS -- I don’t sell my own books or recommend any sellers. I just review books. There are lots of other sites and sellers out there and I don’t endorse any of them. Look around. Get books from the library or garage sales or steal them for all I care!